The Victims – Live in Perth

How good were The Victims?! These cats were awesome. Many years ago I was give a tap that had two awesome live Hoodoo Gurus shows (I will get around to uploading them someday) and a show by The Victims. I didn’t know much about them at the time but once I viewed this gem, I knew I was going to be searching everywhere til I found their records. Every store I went to resulted in me saying “Have you got the records by The Victims?” and I was always met with “I haven’t seen those for years and when they come up, they’re not cheap!” But i refused to give up! Somewhere, in some store around the planet there had to be some records by this Perth trio sitting on some shelf collecting dust with a $2 price tag unbeknownst to the stores owner.

It wasn’t until 2011 when I stumbled into a record store in Japan that I was able to get my hands on a collection of the bands complete recordings PLUS a bunch of demos on vinyl via a Japanese label called 1977 Records. I was in heaven! After 20+ years of searching, I finally found the Victims recordings on vinyl. Yay! See, my friends, never give up!

Anyway, I decided to upload The Victims live show that I had on VHS cos I figured that everyone needs to see it. So here it is featuring a very young Dave Faulkner (aka Dave Flick) on guitar and vocals and James Baker on the drums. Check it out!

Bonus ramblings: Last year I got to see a reunion of sorts as Dave and James together with Ray Ahn from The Hard-Ons reformed a version of The Victims known as The Television Addicts. They were great and a ton of fun. It was interesting to hear Dave playing a looser style of music with The Victims compared to the very perfected and precise tunes of the Hoodoo Gurus. Good times all round.